Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Or is this film actually a cleverly put-together narrative posing as a documentary? TrustMovies went into I TOUCHED ALL YOUR STUFF having paid little attention to the press release (these sometimes give away the store) and so imagined that it was indeed a new doc. But after watching the 90-odd (increasingly odd) minutes, if you told me almost any crazy thing about this movie, I'd have to consider it as at least a possibility. It's that bizarre.

There is probably an entirely other movie to be made about how the two filmmakers -- Maíra Bühler and Matias Mariani, shown above -- came into contact with their prime subject and managed to put this wayward and way-weird movie together (I think they'd call it "The Making of I Touched All Your Stuff"). But what we have here seems to be a "true" shaggy dog story all about immense injustice (to whom and because of what actually changes during the course of the storytelling), a naive dweeb, a mystery woman, Pinocchio, and the hippopotami of Colombian drug lord, Juan Carlos Ortiz Escobar. And that's just for starters.

As the movie progresses (if that's quite the right word) via talking-head interviews, especially with our "hero," one Christopher Kirk (shown at top and above), who appears to be... in prison, along with re-creations, computer files, travel footage and especially Mr. Kirk's constant narration, it takes at least a half hour for us to figure out that we're maybe seeing the all-time dumbest sucker-in-love (above) coupled to the most over-the-top femme fatale (below) in movie history. What a combo! But wait.

The movie moves along via chapter headings that seem alternately funny and weird (not unlike the movie itself). For a time we imagine we're getting a dose of culture clash of a very unsettling order. Then suddenly we're in Lapeer, Michigan (below), visiting the all-American family of our strange hero. All told, we bounce around from Columbia to Brazil to Washington State, California, Michigan and back again.

Among the things we learn from this educational movie is that when the lover muses about his beloved, "Maybe there's a one per cent chance that this could work," he is in big trouble. We also learn not to trust anyone whose password is "mentir" (that's Spanish for "to lie"). Or maybe the lesson here is not to trust anyone at all. Talk about your unreliable narrators!

The documentary that I Touched All Your Stuff most reminded me of is that early be-careful-of-the-Internet demonstration, Catflish, which was more "of its specific time." Love and trust stories are generally timeless, though this one does make use of our current fascination with technology and hacking.

In any case, the doc/narrative/whatever proves non-stop fun that should leave you in the relatively healthy state of questioning just about everything you see and/or hear. From Cinema Slate and running 92 minutes, the movie opens at the following theaters on the dates shown below:

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Movie criticism (mostly foreign films, documentaries and independents: big Hollywood product hardly needs more marketing), very occasional interviews from James van Maanen, now 79 years old, who began his late-career movie reviewing for GreenCine, then took the big blog step over a decade ago. He covers new movies, video releases, and occasional streaming choices. You can reach him at JamesvanMaanen@gmail.com